


When I Face the Mountain

by TheColorBlue



Series: if wishes were horses (beggars would ride) [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint was a quiet man, and he used to be a quiet kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clint

Clint was a quiet man, and he used to be a quiet kid. He didn’t talk much, necessarily, maybe because talking spent too much energy when he’d rather be watching things, and taking the world in, or even focusing on what he wanted to do next. 

There were stray cats in the trailer park that Clint lived in. They’d sleep in the shade of things and sort of wander away or give you the evil eye if you got too close, and Clint learned that with some animals, if you wanted to pick them up, you just went in and did it. Clint scooped up cats, feeling the muscle of them strain under velvety fur, and he got scratched a lot, but then again a lot of times he didn’t. 

Once, he tried to scoop up a squirrel, and afterwards Barney guffawed at his nitwit brother while their mother applied rubbing alcohol and said that he was lucky he hadn’t gotten his whole thumb bit clean off. He’d be lucky if he didn’t catch rabies or something equally sinister to boot. 

She made him wash up and sit inside until supper, and Clint went to sit in the kitchen by the windows. He peeked through the crackly, linoleum blinds, watched the way the light flashed against the sill, and then against the bits of broken glass behind the trailer. 

\--

Clint as an adult sat up in nests, but he took to physical affection the way some cats took to particularly choice patches of sunlight. When he worked with Natasha, and particularly when they weren’t working, he liked to sit close to the Black Widow. He liked sitting shoulder to shoulder, or when she laid her legs across his lap and she read a file or inspected her gun. He liked to lay his head on her lap, and let her run her fingers through his hair. He liked to close his eyes and know: even if physical safety was something that could never be assured, there were other things that could. His heart felt safe with her hand soft against his temple, splayed gently against his neck.

\--

Phil Coulson was safe and he wasn’t safe. There were spaces that seemed to move between you and him, like watching birds move through the sky, and the air between them. 

Once, when Clint was sitting up in his nest, keeping watch over the Tesseract: Phil actually climbed all the way up, and when Clint looked at the other man, he found that Phil was offering food. There was a package of single-serving cherry pie in Coulson’s hand, and when Coulson had gone away again, Clint ate every bite. 

There was a cellist who had moved to Portland, and Clint hugged himself close, high up in his nest, and watched the pale blue light of the Tesseract. 

\--

Three weeks after the Chitauri, he took a flight out to Switzerland. Don’t laugh, he’d punch you in the face, but there were places up in the Alps—you’d swear you could see God; or some kind of god. They’d passed through, once before, him and another SHIELD agent on an op. There was something about the air and the color of the mountains, and the color of the sky with the clouds laced through them. Clint spoke some French and German and Italian. When Clint wanted to get away, he got away to places close to the sky, where he could see landscapes roll down below him in this gradual way. He liked the perspective. He didn’t want to think about anything. He wanted to remember that there were things that existed: things that did not talk to you, or try to reason or rationalize or dominate. 

He was on a hiking trail up in the Alps, and there was a feeling like wanting to be a hawk, like wanting to fly. 

\--

Three months after the Chitauri, and barely three days after some kind of absurd chase that had included himself, Natasha, and Steve, tracking down a pig-headed Winter Soldier—well, three days after that, Nicky Fury goes up to him, and he says, “Agent Barton, I’ll need you to accompany the team that’s monitoring Bruce Banner out in Calcutta. We just need someone in the area in the foreseeable case of shit hitting the fan—General Ross has been a regular pain in my ass lately—and when I suggested Agent Romanov be assigned, she laughed in my face.”

\--

So Clint Barton flew out to India. When he wasn’t on a shift, watching Banner see patients in Stark’s state of the art clinic, he explored the area a bit, tasting all the food, talking with locals. 

By the end of week three, shit had hit the fan, and Barton had followed Hulk out to the edge of the city. SHIELD was attempting damage control and keeping the military from further provoking the Hulk. 

It was just him and Hulk out here, and Clint was keeping his distance, and Hulk was smashing his fists into the ground, roaring. 

He was looking right at Clint. It was like daring Clint to get any closer. 

There was a swami at a local ashram who Clint had chatted with a little, just yesterday. The man in ochre robes had been telling stories to some children, and what Clint remembered: there was this huge battle going on, see, and the enemy had just fired the biggest weapon of all, like the biggest missile you could ever imagine: something that kept on splitting and growing, like a fireball. And the only way you could defeat this missile was by bowing down low, and it would pass you; such was the nature of the weapon. If you fought it, the weapon would only gain strength and completely destroy you. 

Clint had stood just behind the kids, and then said, “I’ve heard of a weapon like that." When the kids all stared back at this American, he offered, "He’s called the Hulk. Legend goes: the angrier he gets, the stronger he gets. And guess what happens when you try to fight him: he only gets angrier.” 

The swami had looked at him too. Then he'd laughed. “Ah, yes. The Hulk. I saw the footage of the green goliath, on youtube. A perfect example for this story, I think.”

The Hulk was looking right at him, and he was snarling.

SHIELD was taking care of the military. Clint was taking care of the Hulk. They’d equipped him with tranquilizer arrows, but the things weren’t worth shit on Hulk, Clint would bet his eyeteeth on that.

Clint’s handler was saying something in his ear, demanding to know why Clint had not yet reported taking the shot. 

Clint turned off his earpiece. 

Then he put down his bow. 

He knelt down on the dry earth.

And he waited.


	2. Hulk

Hulk could have been kind once. He might have been gentle. 

It’s a little hard to remember. 

It’s harder still to hold onto any shreds of kindness, living in the kind of world that he did. 

For some reason, he’s still putting in an effort, sometimes. 

\---

Meanwhile, Clint Barton has put in quite an effort to making Hulk more comfortable, given the situation. 

It is late afternoon. SHIELD agents had been tasked with bringing in food, and Hulk is sitting by the half-smashed remains of a small, concrete house, and he is eating from baskets of Indian food: fat vegetable samosas, and fried eggplant, and circular sheets of crispy papadums. 

Clint watches him while he tastes everything and says, “When I was a kid, food always made me pretty happy, so I figured.”

Hulk pops a samosa into his mouth, and the pastry splitting open spills a whole array of flavor and texture across his tongue. He ate a whole basket of the stuff pretty fast, and then began to slow down after, to savor the experience. The man like a hawk is watching him, light and balanced on his feet. He’d only picked up his bow again when Hulk had looked at him, and then the bow, and then huffed out a noise like a shrug, the sound and breath of it traveling into the lines of his body. More often than not, Hulk talked more with his body than with words, and the man like a hawk seemed smart enough to have cottoned on to that. 

Clint is showing him how he shoots targets from far away, with uncanny precision. Hulk always knows that they hit the targets exactly because he can see it—the way the arrowhead burrows in, splintering wood, or smashing through even concrete and holding fast. He can hear the faint whistle of it moving through the air.

It’s one of the nice things about Clint’s use of a bow and arrow; the sound is subtle and clear, like a set of three notes: release, flight, and then the striking of the target. It is nearly musical, and it doesn’t crack through Hulk’s skull like the sound of a gunshot, bringing back all the old angers and fears. 

Hulk crunches down more papadums, and watches while Clint shows off, creating a tight circular pattern in the wall of a far-off wooden shed, and then waiting while a subordinate runs over to bring them back. 

There is a focused and swift naturalness to the way Clint shoots his targets, one after the other. 

Considering the scene, Hulk is suddenly made more aware of his own sense for precision, and the way it is sometimes lacking. There are the patterns that he can make out in his head, his own sense of place and trajectory. But sometimes his fists are still too big. His body is too heavy. He can pick up the cracker called a papadum without cracking it between enormous fingers. Other times, walls will crumble against his knuckles, and the best he can hope for is calculated destruction. 

His large hands are only a part of the reason why people so often call him a monster, he already knows this. 

\---

Clint runs out of arrows, and he goes to sit near to Hulk. 

He is sitting in the shade made by Hulk’s body, his legs stretched out. He seems to be enjoying himself. 

Hulk regards him for a moment, thinking of a man in iron. He reaches for another basket. When Hulk holds out a hand to him, Clint looks surprised. There is a samosa cradled in the center of Hulk’s palm, like a baby bird’s egg. 

When Clint accepts the offering, he lets his hand touch Hulk’s. 

It is nice, for some reason. 

It is nice, feeling someone’s hand against his. 

They sit together amongst the dust and rubble, eating samosas, and waiting for those other people to bring Clint’s arrows back to him.


End file.
